Sunday, June 30, 2019

It's Too Hot To Do Anything

     I have spent the day on laundry, a silly craft project, and sorting a considerable accumulation of junk mail.  I have not been outside more than fleetingly and I hope to avoid so doing until tomorrow.

Saturday, June 29, 2019

The Cat And I

     Huck and I may not be getting along.  It's chance and bad luck, but somehow, the night before last, he ended up scratching my face, barely missing my right eye.

     He may have been annoying Rannie and tried to escape when I stirred; I might have rolled over on him when we were both asleep.  I don't know; I woke up to pain and a cat tumbling away from me, touched my face and it felt wet, and went down the hall and looked in the mirror to see this:
      It runs from my right ear -- there's a continuation  on my ear proper -- to under my right eye.  There's a shallower, parallel scratch lower on my face and another small one next to my lip.

     He normally sleeps at or between my feet, like a loyal dog.  Tamara's cat, Rannie Wu, often sleeps at or on my right shoulder and my bed is usually neutral ground, off-limits for troublemaking.  So this is a mystery.

     The problem is, I don't feel like risking further damage.  At the very least, his days of sleeping on my bed are over.  Huck may be too much tomcat for a little old lady to manage.

Friday, June 28, 2019

The Circus, Continued

     Last night was the second night of the first Democrat Presidential candidate's debate.  I'm still sorry it isn't being done in the style of "Celebrity Deathmatch," with one-on-one battles, but there was plenty of chaos nevertheless.

     Tamara paid much closer attention than I did, but here's what I took away:

     "There's going to be lots of free stuff and we're going to shake down The Rich to pay for it," remains a magic touchstone for the Dems.  Free or cheap healthcare?  Check.  Wipe out your student loans?  Check.  Bread riots by 2030?  Check.  "Guns are bad," is another chestnut -- and look how well that combination has worked out in Venezuela!

     Venezuela?  Oh, about that; the word "socialism" remains contentious, the concept nebulous even at the hands of the ones who embrace it.  I'm not seeing a dime's worth of difference in actual policy between the contenders who shy away in maidenly modesty and the ones who cozy up to it.   Eugene V. Debs is laughing hollowly in the wings; at least he knew what the word meant.

     Eric Swalwell's a know-it-all frat boy who does not, in fact, know it all.

     Congressman Swalwell and most of the other debaters waxed fairly incoherent at times, piling up Party platitudes in ways that didn't make a lot of sense.

     Joe Biden continues to impress me with his emotional intelligence...and his inability to think on his feet while talking.

     Kamala Harris has good speechwriters, strong ability to improvise and delivers lines extremely well.  She's worth worrying about, especially if you're Joe Biden.

     Peter Buttigieg does his homework and can talk sense on the fly.  I suspect he's running for Vice-President, even if he doesn't know it; I also suspect he doesn't stand a chance at it if the Dems run an old white guy for president.   Sure, he's a minority, but is he minority enough for his Party, especially on a billboard?  Doubtful; if all you've got is a photograph, he's Dan Quayle with shorter hair.

     Why is Bernie Sanders even up there?  Same old, same old, and it's become very old.  It's interesting and sad to see a man who is dug into the existing power structure like a tick up a bear's ear in January attempting to chide a group of debaters who are mostly much younger and generally farther from Washington about how nothing changes because the insiders are too unwilling to burn it all down and start over.  It's classic "Let's you and him fight" talk, from a man who confidently expects himself to be put in charge of the ashes because, after all, it must be his turn.  Last time I checked, he was still Not Actually A Democrat.*

     It was another fun time, with much yelling at the TV, though we did decide to pass up popcorn.  Same bad ideas, which some of them express much more clearly than their peers, a choice of Tweedledee, Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.  Or was it twaddle?
* "His party status became ambiguous once again in March 2019 when he signed a formal "loyalty pledge" to the Democratic Party stating that he is a member of the party and will serve as a Democrat if elected president. He signed the pledge the day after he signed paperwork to run as an independent for reelection to the Senate in 2024." So you tell me.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

And It's Back -- So's The Circus

     The ol' two-fisted, double-sided headache/earache has returned, at times so bad I have trouble forming words when speaking.  It's too loud and too painful.

     Dosed myself up with the usual and I will be pouring warm, medicated water through my sinuses shortly, which helped last time.

*  *  *

     As for the circus, why, that was last night's Presidential candidate debate.  Or was it a half-debate?  Only half the Democrat pool onstage, with the remainder tonight.  I'm a little disappointed there won't be brackets like a sports playoff; it would be more useful.  And think of the opportunities for wagering!

     It was a show of Party orthodoxy, with broad uniformity of opinion on "Medicaid for all," gun control and border issues; Hawaii's Congressperson Tulsi Gabbard was way, way out there in being a little bit less doveish on the possibility of a war with Iran than her fellow contenders.

     The unseen but ever-present eleventh podium onstage belonged to President Trump and none of the ten skipped a chance to call him out as a clear and present danger.  This, too, has become a matter of Party orthodoxy and at least one candidate all but promised to bring criminal charges against their predecessor if they were elected to the presidency -- in true banana republic fashion.

     Marred by technical problems in the form of a microphone issue that took longer to sort out than I would have expected, it quickly became clear that about half of the prospective candidates were only there to graze the Craft Services table, whether they knew it or not.

     Some highlights and first impressions:  Senator Elizabeth Warren remains feisty and annoying, the kind of gadfly more suited to Congress than the Executive branch.   New York Mayor Bill de Blasio struck me as presumptuous, his microphone shut off at least twice while he was trying to speak out of turn, talk over other candidates or take more time than allotted.  I thought "Beto" O'Rourke pushed earnest youthfulness and throbbing emotion a bit farther than his performance could support; he comes off as insincere.  On the other hand, Senator Cory Booker seemed authentic and at one point, when Mayor de Blasio was making a (belabored) point of his own unique experience in "...raising a black son..." and having to caution him to be especially wary in his interactions with police, Sen. Booker briefly looked incredulous and visibly restrained himself from speaking up.  He never made a direct reply to the Mayor's comments but I wouldn't have held a biting retort against him.

     The debate was mostly a parade of ego and a way for the candidates to each try to be more of a Democrat than any of their peers, a process that drives their party ever more Leftward.  We used to have "big tent" parties, each rife with Rockefeller Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats.  Those days are gone; don't look for them to return. 

     And tonight, ten more Democrats onstage. Do I make popcorn or not?

     Maybe just anti-seasickness pills.  I think these candidates are making my headache worse.

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Targeted Failvertising

     An envelope from the local Hyundai dealer showed up the other day, personally addressed to me rather than "occupant," as is so often the case.

     That was mildly interesting, so I set it to one side.  I bought my present Lexus RX-mobile* from their used-car lot, with exactly one key for it; maybe they found the others?

     This morning, I had a look at the contents.  Outside, my full name and address.  Inside, a coupon for $25 of service and a computer-generated letter in a variation on Comic Sans:

          [...] If I offered you the right amount for your 2004 Ford Taurus, would you trade vehicles with me or at least let me buy your Taurus?  I'm asking because I need quality pre-owned vehicles just like yours [...]."

     It goes on in that vein for most of a page.

     This is amusing on a number of levels -- it's very likely that "William" and I were not uniquely subject to having our letters switched, but that hundreds of previous customers received the wrong letter.  And far from being a "quality pre-owned vehicle," I got a pretty good deal on my car -- and no warranty -- because it had become something of a "hangar queen" at the dealers as they corrected years of deferred maintenance, a new surprise on every test drive.  I'm pretty sure they don't want it back; just replacing the tire-pressure sensors would wipe out a third of the profit if they did very well on the resale.

     A for effort, D for execution.  I named the brand because I was satisfied with the series of used Hyundai Accents I drove before the Lexus; they were a good value for money, better built and sturdier than I would have expected for an entry-level car.  My friend The Data Viking has been buying new, high-end Hyundais (Hyundae?) for about a decade and he's happy with them, too.

     But the local dealer needs to hire more diligent envelope-stuffers.  Or was it all a cunning plan to get my attention?  It did that, but I'm not in the least interested in trading my present car.  I buy cars well used and run them until they start to fall apart or someone hits them.
* Literally; it's a Lexus RX330 semi-demi-sport-ute/vanette with a good many years on it.  I like it; I liked the RX300 I had before it and as long as Lexus keeps making variations on this model -- they're up to RX350, last time I looked -- I'll keep buying very used ones when I need a newer car.

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Hey, It Might Not Rain Today!

     It's difficult to imagine, but we might not get any rain at all today -- just a nice, sunny day with a high in the low eighties.

     The rest of the week will be hotter but not much wetter, at least so far.  Maybe a shower tomorrow and rain Sunday.  I'm skeptical; it appeared storms and gray skies were our new normal.

Monday, June 24, 2019

Was Reading. Instead, Headache

     This post was supposed to be about the nicest bunch of fictional vampires I have encountered -- though some of them are very bad indeed.  Octavia Butler's Fledgling is an unusual novel, written while she was recovering from writer's block encountered while researching material for additional novels in her harrowing Earthseed series and deliberately intended as "something lighter."  Of course, it is a murder-mystery--

     Lighter, perhaps, but no lightweight and a fascinating book.

     It's probably more fascinating if you don't read the last half of it while suffering from an intense bilateral earache/headache.  The pain woke me up in the very early hours and the timing of my OTC painkillers was such that I just had to ride it out.  It's probably caused by a combination of our up-and-down air pressure and, well, I may be grinding my teeth in my sleep again, thanks to some work-related stress that I can't do anything about.

     This morning's painkiller and a sinus rinse should be starting to take the edge off.  Any minute now.

     Please spare me the amateur doctoring in comments -- it won't be published.  This is what it is; I've spend lots of time and money with the professionals and it's nothing simple or easy.

Sunday, June 23, 2019

So Good, I've Made It Twice

     It's a simple stew.  I came up with the recipe walking around the store, thinking about what might be good and adding it to the cart.  It turned out better than I expected!

     Last week, I made one version; this evening, a slightly different one.
First version
     The first one had a pound of stew beef, one hot Italian sausage, several kinds of fresh mushrooms (our neighborhood market sells a nice mix, all cut up),  carrots, fennel, a leek and a sauteed Poblano pepper. All cooked in that order, with a tiny bit of olive oil to keep the meat from sticking.

     The second version, I substituted a nice red onion for the leek and added a few mild pickled banana pepper rings, cut up, in place of the Poblano.  I also added a potato, cut into 1/2" cubes.

     You salt and pepper the stew beef, then squeeze the sausage out of its casing (or just start with the bulk version; there's maybe half a pound there, or a little over) into the stewpot.  Let it brown while you snip the stew beef into the pan, making small (1/2" or so) chunks from the big ones, cutting across the grain.  Kitchen shears are ideal for this.

     Flip over the sausage once you get the beef in, and go after it with a spatula or potato masher; the latter is an ideal tool for the job.  You want to break the sausage up into small chunks.  Turn the heat down and leave it to brown, stirring occasionally.

     Cut three or four carrots (or an equivalent amount of the peeled ones they sell in bags) into 1/2" or less sections, and add them to the pot.

     Rinse the mushrooms and add them.  A little water will come with, which is fine.

     Take the fennel bulb, wash it well, and cut into small sections, 3/8" or so and add them to the pot..  Rinse some of the feathery fronds and add them, too.  The stalks seem kind of woody and I rarely use any of them.  The exposed outer sections of the bulb are sometimes kind of ugly, so that's your call.

     Stir that all together and cut up the onion or leek.*  You can saute it if you like, though I didn't.  Add the leek or onion and that's the basic dish; you can cover it and let it cook.

     If you add a potato (and now's the time), you'll probably want a little beef broth at the same time, a cup or less.  If you use pickled peppers, add them now, too.

     Cover and let it cook awhile, just simmering.  The potato version will want at least twenty minutes, and the longer you can give either version (within reason!), the better it will be.

     If you want a Poblano or other fresh pepper, that goes in last, after the rest has had at least fifteen minutes to cook.  Cut it up, saute it in a non-stick  pan, and add it to the stew once the color deepens and it gets aromatic.

     The flavor is just wonderful; there's something about this combination that really appeals to my palate -- and Tam's, too.
* Leeks are muddy as can be.  Time spent rinsing a leek will be well-rewarded, and you will probably still find mud in the greener parts.  Consider yourself warned!  It's a lot of work but they're mellower than an onion.


Saturday, June 22, 2019

Grilled Breakfast Sandwich

     So, it turns out a grilled Swiss cheese/pastrami/fried egg on rye bread is totally a thing you can do. I was seriously low on conventional breakfast supplies, but we had a little truffle butter left that I fried a broken-yolked egg in, then added plain butter to the pan and let it melt while I layered the hot egg between two slices of pastrami, with Swiss cheese on the outside and bread around that.

     Once the bread has browned and the cheese has melted, the center's still warm and it's ready to eat.  Tasty!

Friday, June 21, 2019

Working On A Starship

     In which I tell tales that are only a little bit fictionalized:

     It finally happened.  After years of budget-deferred maintenance and hard use, the old auxiliary stardrive on Billy How is starting to fail.

     That's the starship William Howard Taft to the likes of you.  It's a bulk hauler, United States Space Corps surplus like most of the NATO spacecraft on our side of the Hidden Frontier, with a long, distinguished and penny-pinching history.  Not that I blame the owners; the profit margin is tiny, especially competing against the newer containerized haulers.

     What she lacks in size and flexibility, Billy How makes up for with inadequate speed and inefficiency.  The aux 'drive is a good example.  Built early in the vague and clumsy War between the U.S. and the breakaway "Federation of Concerned Spacemen," her stardrive was built before our side had figured out how to "feather" the 'drive to reduce the effective realspace mass of a spacecraft.  The high-voltage power supplies, modulators and phantasmatron tubes in the 'drive finals were built to punch a hole in space fast and rough, and not to idle at low level for months at a time.  In a short pulse, the 'drive were as powerful as all but the very largest carriers, like Vulpine, Caprine and Lupine, but they were never meant for continuous duty.

     So once we learned how to copy 'drive-feathering from FCS starships, ships like Billy How with Gen 2 stardrives got "realspace auxiliary 'drives," low-powered, simplified, mass-produced "stardrives" that could shunt off mass to never-never land without ever tipping the vessel into Jump space.  They're not as efficient as the FCS version, not even close, but it's still a huge saving in reaction mass.  And mostly they just sit there, off or on; you dial in the mass-correction and they just run, with none of the fiddling and finagling that  it takes to get into and out of Jump space with the real stardrive.

     That unglamorous invisibility is part of the problem: nobody thinks about 'em.  The aux 'drive is a magic lump, out of sight and out of mind. The Captains all take the aux 'drive for granted; the owners balk at spending any money on them.  If you're in Engineering like me, you do your best to keep the spare parts stocked, keep the fine adjustments peaked up, change the air filters and argue for upgrades when they ship gets refitted.

     Billy How's aux drive got solid-state finals 23 years ago -- ooh, transistors, how 1990s! -- and there they stood.  I'd requested, budgeted, made reports, argued, shown the brass what was what, given them my best guess about how likely it was to go up in smoke, and they hadn't wanted to spend a dime on it. When the old-school microcontroller that provided a nice touchscreen interface for control and monitoring conked out four years ago, the Captain had me reconnect the manual controls instead of spending eight thousand dollars on a replacement.  After all, there was a scheduled refit coming up before very long.  (How long is "before very long?"  Don't ask me; that's above my pay grade.)

     The touchscreen system used to gave us a pretty good look into the innards of the aux 'drive, monitoring and logging thousands of parameters.  The manual controls and meters provide a lot less detail.  So when one of the nifty transistorized, sealed power amplifier modules started to flake out a couple of days ago, it took a couple of shifts to figure out just what was going on.  The predrivers had become very fussy, needing more and more adjustment to keep them at maximum power but out of over-temperature or overcurrent failure, and at first the problem looked like more of that.

     It wasn't.  The power amplifier module -- all of a thousand Watts -- could be restored from the fault condition by a full, ten-minute cold reboot of the aux 'drive, at which point it would run for five minutes, flag a COM FAULT and shut down.  No other symptoms, no weird readings -- and no way short of irreversible action with a chisel to get a look at the inside of the thing.

     We didn't have a spare.  The last one of those went in six months back, off Blizzard, and when I'd put in a request for a replacement, it was bounced -- after all, that refit was going to happen!

     They scheduled the refit last month.  It's six months off.  With a final dead amplifier module in the aux, Billy How will run slow on the realspace leg of this trip and it looks like we'll be sitting at the space station until we can get a new amplifier.  What it's going to cost to expedite delivery of that -- assuming Beamathon even has any in stock -- you don't want to know.  What the module itself will cost, I don't want to know, cubed.

     Fix it before it breaks or pay the price later.  It never gets any cheaper, no matter how long you wait.

Thursday, June 20, 2019


     It's interesting that I'm reluctant to write about the book I'm currently reading, Max Boot's The Corrosion Of Conservatism, about his disillusionment with the GOP under Mr. Trump's Presidency.

     I don't agree with many -- possibly even most -- of Mr. Boot's opinions, though I'm no fan of Mr. Trump; as an East Coast policy wonk, Max Boot seems to have no idea of how harshly Secretary Clinton was viewed here in the Rust Belt.

     The true disconnect in American politics these days is that the skills needed to win a Presidential election are not well-related to the skills needed to be President.  This may be a reflection of the extra baggage the office has taken on or found itself stuck with.  Congress was supposed to do the heavy lifting on policy and law, while the Executive branch was supposed to, well, execute the day-to-day effort of making it run.  Presidents were our guy to shake hands with kings and talk sense and strategy with generals -- after Congress had declared war.

     The slow accretion of excessive power to the Executive seems to be an inherent problem with republics and we can only hope that in our republic, it carries its own cure.  The trend in recent decades to stick incumbent Presidents with an uncooperative and sometimes hostile Congress does bid well for things to get worked out -- or break wide open.

     Here I am, four paragraphs in, and yes, I'm still tapdancing around Mr. Trump.  Max Boot thinks he's a dire and terrible danger.  I think he's a graceless clod, who combines many of the worst characteristics of Jackson and Buchanan; but in the end he is, like all Presidents, a temporary hire.  It's a short-term job, four years with an option of four more, and then you go write your memoirs, do charitable work and fade away.

     I just wish I had more confidence that either of the big parties learned anything about candidate selection from the 2016 election.  Instead they've focused on rah-rah rallies better suited to Constantinople in 532 AD, 1917 Russia -- or Rome in 1922.  You want a Jefferson or a Coolidge in the White House?  That's not how you get them.

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

And Here We Are

     Found myself working at the North Campus yesterday, alone, when a migraine hit.  Bad one, the kind where the room spins and working on a two-step ladder is out of the question.  Which wasn't so great, since I had some things planned that took way more ladder.

    Been there, done that; I figured I'd just grab an acetaminophen and a couple of ibuprofen from my stash and keep moving, maybe stick closer to the ground while it kicked in.  The combination doesn't stop the headache but it mutes it considerably.

     Yeah, little problem: I had no OTC analgesics.  I belatedly remembered I'd taken the last acetaminophen the day before and had planned to restock--  "Planned" is not "done" and doing hadn't happened.

     Okay, it's a mile to the corner drugstore, mostly in a straight line.  I could drive that; it wouldn't be much fun but I could manage.  I stood up and turned--  And sat right back down as the room spun.  Which was when I remembered that's a bridge out and the closest source for headache pills was at least a three mile drive.

     It doesn't sound like much but just then, you'd have not wanted to share the road with me.  I gave up and called Tamara to bring some medicine from home, and did desk work while I was waiting.

     Never did get on that ladder.

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

To Hell With Depression

     Depression sucks.  I have struggled with depression most of my life.  Off and on, thank heavens; the cloudbank lifts quite often and it hasn't been a big problem for me in many years.  I try to keep busy.

     Here's the deal: most of the drugs developed to "treat" depression are about as subtle as a hammer.  I used Wellbutrin to quit smoking, back before there was a specific stop-smoking version of the drug, and it made me twitchy and strange (yes, more than usual). But it got me past the critical few weeks of really strong cravings, so it was worth it in the short term.*  Long-term?  No thanks; I'd rather be moody.

     But it's not really an either-or choice; for me, mild depression can be faked away.  Tricked.  Cheated: get busy at something, get into the physicality of it or the mental effort of mowing a lawn, building a bookshelf, even, sometimes, putting words on paper, and you can forget how everything is bleak and gloomily awful.

     Maybe it still is, when the thing is finished; maybe it comes back.  You've nevertheless bought your brain an hour or more of different chemicals, different electrical patterns, different thoughts.

     I think that's what the drugs do, too.  One of the angles they tried in treating my chronic facial pain/migraine was to run through a few anti-depressants; supposedly some of them help with some kinds of chronic pain and only a deeply cynical person -- or possibly an M. D. neurologist -- would wonder if they might help with someone who was using attention-seeking behavior as a cover for depression.   For me, all they did was screw me up and if you thought having little lightnings dancing along one cheekbone, eye and ear was unpleasant, add in a touch of depersonalization or bigtime emotional numbing, and see how that improves the experience.  (Hint: it doesn't.)

     Depression's a real thing but it doesn't help to let it loom too large.  If you pick at it, it just grows.  If you possibly can, go do something else instead.  The only way to get off that track is to stop going around on it and there are scads of other things to do.  If they're not fun, at least they can be useful.  It's like picking away at a brick wall with a lovely, sunlit meadow on the other side: there's a lot of gritty mortar to dig out before that first brick falls and lets a sunbeam through.
* I'm still addicted.  It's a long time between cravings but even now, twenty-some years later, every once in awhile it hits me, I could really use a smoke just now.  Yeah, and reek like an ashtray the next day, with a tongue like a mile of muddy road.  No thanks!

Monday, June 17, 2019


     At least this Monday starts at a reasonable hour.  Last week was a struggle and I never really got my clock reset.

     This weekend was mostly spent recovering.

     This week, I'll be visiting the hardware store for some better window blinds.

Sunday, June 16, 2019

Father's Day

     It's a difficult day.  My Dad was born a little bit before the 1929 stock market crash and grew up, third from youngest of a very large family, in the shadow of the Great Depression and World War Two.

     Competence, thrift and frugality were not mere concepts to him; they were ingrained characteristics.  He did what he could to teach them to his children, though I think he despaired of succeeding.  Nothing mechanical was a mystery to him, though he'd hire a plumber or an electrician if the job was too big or required specialized equipment.  He did woodwork with ease -- nothing fancy, never an extra bit of ornament or fancy finish but all of it square, true and plumb.

     He didn't suffer fools and had scant patience with pretended competence.  He had nothing but admiration for people who could do a job well but found the lazy, uncorrectably ignorant or foolish beneath contempt.

     And he was the funniest angry man I ever knew.  Not always; he could be moody and a truly towering rage could leave him at a loss for words, but usually the things that annoy most of us, he could turn into wonderful slow-burn rants and flights of fancy, and end up laughing himself.  It was a valuable skill.

     My Dad's been gone well over a decade now.  I still find myself thinking, "Oh, Dad would know that!" and starting to reach for the phone, or wanting to tell him about something that happened that would amuse him.  I still miss  him.

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Fun With Robots, Continued

     "Alexa, would you put beans up your nose?"
     "You need to be sure you wouldn't do that."
     "Alexa, is there a Santa Claus?"
     "Alexa, why would you have cookies?"

Friday, June 14, 2019

Updates, Updates

     It was a Windows update the other day.  Today it's a Firefox update.  Will the computer run better or worse?  Unknown; I gave up and started up the Raspberry Pi.

Thursday, June 13, 2019

It's Thursday

     Get through today, get through Friday.  That's as ambitious as my goals are right now.

     It's ridiculous how difficult this schedule is for me.  I can't quite believe it, and then I'm irked at myself for the gastrointestinal upset, staggering exhaustion and mood swings, as if they were moral failings or something I could overcome by a concentrated effort of will.

     They're not.  They're physical limitations.  Past doing my best to get enough sleep, healthy food (not doing as well there as I should, but a lot of things don't sit too well) and taking my vitamins and OTC pain  meds, there's nothing I can do but hang on and do my work as well as I can.

     I'm going to shop for new and better window blinds this weekend.  That would have helped this week.  Not being able to get my room really dark is a big obstacle to falling asleep.

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Some Computer Oddness

    Mozilla keeps improving Firefox.  The improvements keep jamming up my desktop computer.  I'm starting to think it's time to find another one and I'm not looking forward to it.

     Or is it Firefox?  Microsoft Edge is just as crashy.

     I'm thinking it's a hardware problem.  My desktop machine was old and underpowered when I bought it.  Need something fast, cheap and moderately powerful, though I don't run any computer games, so the performance requirements are modest other than the occasional dozen open tabs in Firefox.

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

It's Oh-Dark-Thirty, All Right

     Today, I learned that if the Japanese military had been in the habit of reading the Chicago Tribune, WW II might've run a lot longer.

     You see, in June 1942, a Trib reporter spilled the beans about the U. S. reading encrypted IJN radio traffic, thanks to a buddy who was XO on the USS Lexington.  It's still unclear exactly how the Tribune's Stanley Johnston got the information from Commander Morton Seligman.  Seligman, an otherwise exemplary officer who had been headed for great things, found his Naval career stopped cold; Johnston narrowly avoided being brought up on espionage charges and the whole thing was swept under the rug, in hopes the Japanese military wouldn't notice.

     Given the complete lack of love between the Tribune's Colonel McCormick and President Roosevelt dating back long before the war, FDR probably regretted having to officially ignore the incident.

     What do you know, Imperial Japan wasn't reading the Chicago papers.  They never found out we were reading their mail, or at least a fair amount of it.  They might not have believed it; feeling secure behind a difficult language for outsiders to learn and an encryption scheme that added complications to a mechanical system similar to Germany's Enigma, they apparently never considered any risk to their secure communications other than losing code books to the Allies.

     To this day, the Tribune considers their report quite a wonderful scoop; but it could have delayed the war's end by a couple of years if Japan had realized we were reading over their shoulder the whole time.

     Commander (on retirement, Captain) Seligman served ashore until 1944, and never uttered a word of complaint or explanation about it for the rest of his life.

Monday, June 10, 2019


     I am especially not a morning person when 6:20 a.m. feels like getting on toward lunch time.  Also, this day has been seriously Monday so far, including witnessing a near-miss almost T-bone between a speeding fire truck and a distracted late-night driver, at a construction site in an intersection on my way in to work.

     At work, already one major and one minor piece of equipment have failed in mysterious ways; well, not so mysterious for the major item: "It was making a sound like a wired pulled too tight, so we shut it down and got the wires out from under it.  Then it didn't work when we turned it back on." Ya think?  And I can't even think about starting to try to fix until it -- and I -- get clear of the ongoing task, which will run for another thirty minutes at least.  Yes, I understand the old horse knew the way home and these new-fangled autymo-biles aren't even smart enough to get lost.  Isn't that a good reason to pay closer attention?

     It would seem not.

     One o'clock seems so very far away.

Sunday, June 09, 2019

And Welcome To Sunday

     I'm working the early shift all this week, barring anything seriously unexpected, so posting will probably be a bit random.  I hope to have gotten a head start on it by waking up extremely early today, and I'll be hitting the hay early this afternoon, too.

     But first, a trip to the grocery and the five and dime, to stock up for the week ahead!

Saturday, June 08, 2019

Pickled Peppers Hash

     Corned beef hash, of course.

     A brand of pickled goodies I hadn't seen before showed up at our nearby grocers: Jeff's Garden.   The Mild Banana Pepper Rings -- "Sunshine Mix" -- looked especially good, so I bought them.

     It's a flavor I hadn't tasted in years, delightfully savory, not overpoweringly hot,  and I tried some in a green salad, where they added just a little extra.  The other day, it occurred to me that they'd probably work nicely in hash, so I tried it.  (Don't ask me just what the flavor is; the ingredient list on the bottle is refreshingly short and there's nothing unfamiliar -- peppers, vinegar, tumeric and rosemary, plus salt and some preservative.  But it's a flavor I remember from childhood.)

     What I made was Bobbi-style hash, with a thin layer of flour (plus a pinch of pepper and Italian seasoning mix) in the bottom of the pan so it'll form a nice crust, some onion and parsley mixed in with the canned hash and an egg cooked on top.  I snipped up a couple of tablespoons of the banana pepper rings and mixed them in before tuned it out atop the flour, pushed the edges up all around so there's a gap for the excess liquid, and cooked as usual, six minutes or so over medium geat before breaking an egg over it and cover it until the egg is done.  I added some chives and Summer Savory on the egg. A little Manchego cheese diced on top, and there you are.

     It was tasty!  The peppers blended right in; I probably could have added even more but the balance worked well.

Friday, June 07, 2019


     So, say you're a solid conservative state Senator, with a record of voting along party lines; and say you're running for Mayor of the state's largest city.

     What wouldn't you do for votes?

     Jim Merritt plans to walk in the Indianapolis Pride Parade this weekend.  The parade organizers, pointing to his voting record in the legislature, aren't happy about it.  Unwilling to find themselves branded as exclusionist, a compromise has been reached, in which he will be marching as a private citizen and not as a mayoral candidate.

     Look, I'm not going to offer up any broad value judgements here, other than to note that the local rainbow types tend to avoid the sort of debauchery reportedly found in coastal metropolii when they have their parade and picnic; it's a sedate enough event that the local office-holders usually make an appearance, Democrat and Republican alike.  It's not my party but if they wanna go tromping down the street, waving banners and whooping it up, fine; they're Americans; they can do that.

     On the other hand , if you're a state Senator with a serious social conservative voting record, it's pretty much flat-out pandering to show up and stick a rainbow ribbon in your lapel.  All it does is alienate your base and make people who'd never heard of you go look up how you voted.  I'm sure there will be Republican voters in the Pride Parade crowd -- this is Indiana, after all --  but it's a demographic uniquely positioned to be disinclined to forgive his RFRA vote.

     It makes you wonder if he'd bite the head off a live chicken if he thought it would get him that cushy office high up in the City-County Building.  I'm pretty sure his party can find a better candidate.

     The debate about civil rights for a long-despised minority vs. religious practice is one worth having  -- not in my comments section, but at a societal level -- and it's ongoing.  Many people have deeply-held feelings about their positions on these issues.

     From the evidence, state Senator Merritt isn't one of them.  You have to wonder what else he'd be flexible on.  Possibly everything.

Thursday, June 06, 2019

At Last, A Decent Night's Sleep

     With one thing and another -- headaches, distractions, last-minute cleanups and, yes, television -- I hadn't had a really good night's sleep in quite some time. 

     Made up my mind yesterday that I was darned well gonna get to bed early, and what do you know, after only a short detour into dozing on the couch after my salad and sandwich,* I actually managed to spend some quality time with Little Nemo!

     Maybe I'll start a trend.  At least a personal one.
* Mixed spring greens with orange bell pepper, black olives and feta cheese, alongside two toasted slices of rye/pumernickel swirl with pastrami, mild pickled banana peppers, Swiss cheese, thin-sliced Buffalo chicken and a little bit of horseradish in between.  Which is how you get dreams like this.

Wednesday, June 05, 2019

Wednesday, Migraine

     Thanks for stopping by!  I have taken OTC analgesics.  I'm waiting for them to kick in.  It will be good when that happens.

     Until then, not so good.

Tuesday, June 04, 2019

"Yanqui, Go Home" (Union Jack Edition)

     The President of the United States is in Great Britain, making State visits and doing his usual sort of things -- sniping at critics, admiring the crowned heads, etc.  Some of the Crown subjects aren't too happy about it.

     At one time, I would have fussed about the futility of protesting foreign leaders.  What's it gonna do?  Do the sign-wavers and balloon-toters believe he's going to see them and think, "Oh, dear, the good people of Foreignostan find me objectionable," return home forthwith and resign on arrival?  Not how it works; even in the UK, where Prime Ministers are, occasionally, embarrassed out of office, that's not actually how it works.

     But anymore -- face it, historically, it's been safer in most countries to criticize the leader of a different country than your own (with the exception of protesting USSR bosses in most of Eastern Europe during the Soviet years); the Brits have already chased their PM out and they're feeling their oats, at least as much as they ever do.   If they want to have a Five Minutes Hate funfair, they're going to, and at least they're not trying to re-invade India or anything along those lines.

Monday, June 03, 2019

Post No Bills

     Someone with a particular -- and preposterously foolish -- beef has decided my comments section is a great place upon which to vent his particular, badly-spelled and repetitive spleen.

     So we're not going to have comments for awhile.

     And here's a pro-tip: if you have come to the conclusion that members of some particular demographic are horrible, awful people, albeit lawful, then you should avoid them.  Don't seek them out.  Especially not if they've been stalked before, are well-armed, and happen to be pretty good at sussing out who the nitwit behind the mask might be, just in case that individual should happen to show up in person to make credible threats.

     Not today, ersatz ISIS.  Not today.  Keep your chador to yourself.

Sunday, June 02, 2019

Conversations With A Robot

     "Alexa, how do I get these cats to love one another and not fight?"*

*  *  *
     "Alexa, set a timer.  Ninety seconds."


     "Alexa, define 'pedant.'"


     "Close enough."
*  *  *
     "Alexa, who loves ya, baby?"


     Yes, she really says that.
* One way is to let the tomcat fight my hand a little!  Huck's careful to not hurt me but between speedy claw slaps and biting, it's clear he could.